


A Brace of Bad Dogs

by SoniaVice



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Carolina Hurricanes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2587715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff Skinner is having a crap year, and he ends up in the dog house, figuratively and literally, with Alex Semin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brace of Bad Dogs

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the Carolina win over Columbus.
> 
> Contains:
> 
> Background Jeff/Eric. Completely un-negotiated relationship.
> 
> Lies:
> 
> I have no idea when they flew to Washington. No one is married in this story.
> 
> True things that you need to know:
> 
> In the Columbus game the underperforming Skinner scored a goal and got promoted from the fourth line up to the top line with Staal and Semin. The really underperforming Semin had been healthy scratched for a few nights.

"If this is American movie, we would have black leather jackets so audience know we are the bad boys." Alex was keeping his voice down—most of the guys were asleep or at least quiet. Low lights, night flight, it felt like they were alone. 

Jeff had taken what was his new usual seat—beside Alex in an empty row carefully selected to be as far away from Eric as Alex could make it without being right in the back with the goalies. 

"And really tight jeans," Jeff said. 

Alex made a noise of disapproval and twisted his lips into a smile, eyes glittering with all the things he never said outright. "All you think about," he said fondly. Jeff was growing accustomed to his face, his almost crooked smile, the lines at his eyes. It was a good face. Good for sly smiles, laughing at dirty jokes and plastering over darker things with a quick coat of sarcasm and snark. 

"You were good tonight," Jeff said, and Alex looked away. He might not want to talk about it, even though he had been good. It had been fun to play with him. Hard to not want it all the time. But Jeff was learning not to want, everyone so ready to teach him.

"You were better. Got reward for being good dog." Alex shoved the armrest between them out of the way and swung his arm around Jeff and pulled him in close. There was no one who could see them at that moment, but at any moment that could change. 

"Woof, woof," Jeff said, quieter now that he was close enough to Alex to taste his skin if he chose to.

"That is one thing I have never done—play on same line with ex-boyfriend."

"It's easier for that to happen to you if you've ever had a boyfriend," Jeff said. And by easier he meant really fucking hard. "And I'm still not sure ex is the right prefix."

"You say this and then if I call him asshole-boyfriend you get angry. I call him Captain instead, keep you happy." 

"It's not so much what you say, it's how you say it," Jeff said and looked up to watch Alex take it as a compliment. 

"It is unfair that I can't kiss you now."

"Tough for you, yeah," Jeff said, so of course Alex tilted his head up with a rough hand and kissed him. He was serious about it, like he always was. It tasted like he meant it, like it always did. He stopped too soon and ran his thumb over Jeff's lips while he looked down, lips wet and wry, eyes telling Jeff this was—not a joke, but not a serious thing, not something that Jeff should take as a token of intent—how he always meant it.

"I forgot how much noise you make, so maybe we should suffer a little longer."

Jeff blinked, stupidly he was sure, waited for his tongue to be ready for speaking again. "I thought this needed vodka?" he said when he could. 

Alex laughed almost silently, cautious of the men around them, the low light and reclined seats not giving them real privacy. "Why pretend?" he said. Good question. So good it spawned a dozen others. "Go to sleep," Alex added, pulling Jeff in closer, so he was warm and comfortable and couldn't see Alex's face. 

The first time there had been vodka, but only Alex had been drinking. Had they been pretending? And if they had, were they telling the same lies?

"Do you want to room together in Washington?" Jeff asked.

"You don't need to."

"Not what I asked. Do you want to be alone?"

"Yes," Alex said in his laughing tone that said he meant no. His eyes would be serious, saying how much he wanted Jeff to believe him, but Jeff never knew which to believe—the words or the tone. 

"Tell them to get a double for us if you want." Capitulating. He did it all the time. Tried of sorting out Alex's messages, not merely mixed, but a stew of conflicting meanings and emotions, he'd just give up. If he spoke Russian it would only be worse—more layers and less clarity. And if he unpicked the knot, where would he be then? So he let Alex do as he would.

Jeff had left Eric's house with most of his clothes in two bags and had to knock on his own door and beg for sanctuary. 

Alex had been shocked, dismayed, sorry to see him and quick to turn down the lights and mute the television. He'd sat Jeff down on his own sofa and listened to his disaster story. 

Alex had let the rent lapse on the place he'd had the year before, an Alexian thing to do, Jeff now understood, like Alex was asking for a trade or goading himself into making good his constant threat. 

"Come to Russia with me," he'd said right after the first kiss, and Jeff had put it all down to the vodka.

Jeff had told Alex to use his house when he'd heard him complaining about having to find another apartment in training camp. He had some idea he should keep it for appearances sake with the expectation, reasonable he thought, of never living in it ever again. He'd been happy to be generous and helpful, and Alex had moved in.

Until Eric's house was full of relatives—concerned parents and worried in-laws a tougher crowd than vaguely tolerant brothers—and Jeff hit himself in the head on another guy's shoulder, and he'd run for it, tail between his legs. Eric hadn't ever asked him to come back, hadn't done anything but smile politely and ask earnestly after his health. 

He was beautiful when he smiled, Eric, so open and easy. Jeff always smiled back when he said he was fine.

Alex had set the vodka on the coffee table and said, "I know you may not." He'd smiled like he wasn't sorry and knocked back a shot. Alex had made the room dark and quiet, and Jeff could do nothing but lean back and listen to the blood rush in his veins. 

"I'm sorry to do this to you," Jeff had told him, and Alex shrugged like it was no bother. "Second bedroom is empty," Alex had said. "Or we can share," he'd added seriously, eyes laughing. Jeff had chosen to take it as a joke.

"I'm not coming on to you," Alex had said right before he'd kissed Jeff the first time. The taste of vodka had drawn the response out of Jeff.

"I don't think it's over. Me and Eric," he'd said when Alex had started talking about Russia, not what they were doing kissing. Alex had looked at him for a long time and then he'd poured another shot for himself.

"I'm a bad influence on you," Alex liked to say, proudly, when he'd have Jeff gasping for breath, hands deep in Alex's hair. And then he'd stand up, and grimace, look a little guilty and say, "I'm just going to..." He'd close the door to Jeff's bedroom, and Jeff would go to bed in the guestroom . If they jacked off twenty feet apart with two closed doors between them, they weren't doing anything either had to feel guilty about. 

Alex _was_ a bad influence. Because it wasn't all kissing and lies. He was bitter and unhappy and not the sort of man to be pushed into obedience in the usual way. He was cynical and jaded enough for both of them, and the only thing Jeff was sure of was that Alex thought the odds of him really going to Russia were about the same as Jeff's moving back with Eric. 

"Why is this house so crappy?" Jeff had asked one night. He'd been cleared to play and failed to be anyone's messiah when he did. But cleared to play meant cleared to share the vodka without sucking it off Alex's tongue. Or so they told each other. He'd not been sober. 

"You know why," Alex had said. "I know nothing," Jeff had said and laughed until Alex shut him up in their usual way. 

"You buy big house, bedrooms for all your family," Alex told him, and Jeff had smiled at him—Alex was delightfully boggled by stories of his big family, "a few extra for when you find a boyfriend to move in with good cover story," and Jeff had stopped smiling. "You do that and you are saying to team, not to trade me. You are saying you think you are safe. You do that when you are like us, and they take as dare."

"We should buy a house," Jeff had said. It made a change from stories of all they could do together in Russia playing on the first line every night. Alex had looked sadly at him, like that was too painful an idea to joke about. 

The flickers of light from Alex's phone woke Jeff up. "Stop reading trade rumours," he said. 

"No rumours. I am untradeable. It says so in the paper, so is true. Not even Leafs would take me."

"They remembered me yet?" 

"Now that you are good dog, they will remember."

"The Leafs would love you. You should go, you could live in my old bedroom."

"Yes?" Alex squeezed him closer, in lieu of a kiss. "Your parents want old Russian as new son?"

"Why not? You play hockey. That's enough."

"Not what paper say I do." Alex turned off his phone and shoved it out of sight. He ran his fingers through Jeff's hair. Jeff would fall asleep again if Alex kept that up. "Come to Toronto with me," Alex said.

Jeff laughed and indulged the fantasy. Easier to imagine than Russia. "We could both live with Mom and Dad."

Alex made a noise of dissatisfaction and said, "Buy our own place. Big house." It seemed today it was okay to talk about it, so Jeff added, "Lots of bedrooms."

The tannoy sounded, and the pilot made her announcements about seatbelts and landings. Jeff sat up and scrubbed at his now hopeless hair. He hadn't realized he'd been asleep that long. 

They shuffled off the plane together, Alex close behind him. He caught Jeff's hand and tugged him to a stop near the door. Eric was watching, standing up and waiting to exit last. "Can you switch rooms to one double?" Alex said to the appropriate assistant in a normal speaking voice, lips twisted into a wry smile, eyes demanding compliance. 

"You sure you need a double?" Andrej said. He'd been in the row behind them, was waiting patiently for them to move.

"We want to room together, not sleep together," Jeff said with a roll of his eyes. Alex turned and winked at him and tugged at their still linked hands.

"Whatever works," Andrej said, and they all left the plane, no one mentioning that Alex kept hold of his hand until they boarded the bus. 

Alex pushed him up against the door of their room as soon as they were alone and kissed him hard and dirty. Alex was right, he did make a lot of noise. 

"I think about it every day," Alex said when he'd stopped. He stalked across the room, like maybe that had been too far even for him. Jeff didn't know where the lines were, had come to understand Alex needed it to be his job to keep track of where the boundaries were. Jeff went along with it, could still see Eric in the rearview mirror, and he wasn't going to Russia with anyone until he lost sight of him for good. 

"Russia," Jeff said.

"Sweden," Alex said. "Why not Sweden? We would fit there. _You_ would fit there."

"Is this about Washington or is it Ovechkin?"

Alex made a noise and turned and glared at him, spat some Russian at him. "Call him little lamb, I dare you," Alex said in English, nasty and rude, eyes bright. He had Jeff's hand again, was pulling him down to the bed. Maybe they hadn't needed a double after all. 

"I think about it every day, how I can't go back. How they would," he flopped over and threw his arms out wide, "put me in army again. Throw away the key. You are a bad influence on me."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes, why are you not telling me how I should be good dog, be grateful, try hard. Pep talk."

"You are beautiful when you play," Jeff said, and Alex's eyes went dark with something that might have been hatred. 

"We both play with your captain tonight, you think?" he said. Jeff's lip were puffy and sore, maybe bleeding a little. He tested with his tongue and tasted only Alex. 

Jeff shrugged. He thought about it everyday. How much he wanted to play with Eric all the time. They'd been very good together—the three of them. And if they kept it up at least one of them would be traded. Alex gave up on him and rolled over again, closed his eyes.

"Come to Toronto with me," Jeff said. 

Alex smiled and said yes like he meant it. Never opened his eyes.


End file.
